Midnight Soapscum Year 2 Episode 2 - Live Original Stage Serial in Anchorage

[If you want to avoid my way too long and highly tangential intro, you can go straight to my comments on the performance.]

Where else can you see live stage serials? I'm sure they must be out there, but Google didn't help. I did find videos of Pakistani stage shows - the Urdu language shows didn't work, but the Punjabi ones did. But I'm not sure these are serials or television or live stage.

I found a blog post about writing in serial form, even writing a serial on her blog, but despite the post title "Writing on Stage: Coming to terms with serial writing" I couldn't find any stages in the post.

And then I got this:

STAGE 4: CREATING A SERIALS PREDICTION & ISSUE
Now that Horizon knows how many copies of a serial you take, how often the serial should be claimed and who your vendor is, you can now create a prediction pattern and set an issue to begin the prediction pattern with.
1. Use Item Search/F2 to bring up the item search box and search for the relevant journal.
2. Send to/F10 the title to ‘Serials Control’.
3. Ensure the correct copy for your location has been selected and click the Prediction button located along the bottom of the window

Then there's Todd's Serial Blog and his other blog Todd Gault's Serial Experience. Both seem to be about movie serials.

I found a post by a young Indian actor looking for work on Cinechance that seems to be an electronic classified section for actors to find work in India.

About Myself :

hi guyz ,m vikram frm delhi.m 21 yrs of age nd graduating. i hav worked in serials for dd "do behne" , & "kabhi dhoop kabhi choan" both directed by reputed director "mr shiv kumar".also done one ad film for india tv. i love to act nd travel..........[emphasis added][And before you make fun of his written English, his bio says he also speaks Hindi and Punjabi]

And I learned from StageNews that

The BBC’s drama production department has announced a restructure of its senior staff, with head of series and serials Kate Harwood promoted to the role of controller of series and serials.

But that's television and radio.


I also learned that there is a software called live theater:

Live Theater 1.2 description
Live Theater - with the help of the software Live Theater TM you will be able to arrange the live broadcast from theater, TV etc. to a wider range of the Internet audience.

It is highly recommended to use broadband Internet connection for using Live Theater.

Here are some key features of "Live Theater":

· Broadcasting of live streaming video over Internet from any possible external video signal sources (video camera, web camera, video capture card etc.).
· Re-broadcasting over Internet of any source of TV signal, digital and analog.
· Broadcasting of the prerecorded video files.
· The areas of use are not restricted by the above mentioned. Live Theater can be used for any other purpose of brodcasting [sic] streaming video over Internet.
· The main advantage of Live Theater is ability of broadcasting of high-quality video without purchasing the expensive hardware and password protection from watching by an unauthorized user.

One problem I had with 'live theater' was that it monopolized the google hits for that search term.

So why all this esoteric trivia? Because I was trying to find out how unique Christian Heppinstall's Midnight Soapscum production at Out North is. Just because I can't find anything about live theatrical serials doesn't mean someone isn't doing them. After all, I didn't find Soapscum googling variations of stage/theater/serials/ etc. either. But given the obstacles to producing a play a week, I bet it's not happening too many places.


Christian's first run of Midnight Soapscum was a live, theatrical serial about a centenarian Russian emigre and her porn studio empire in San Francisco and it first ran over a couple of months in Spring 2007.

And now it's back - five new episodes of Midnight Soapscum. This time the subtitle is: Goes To Hell.

Just the idea is pretty amazing. Live, original episodes, performed weekly, with local talent. Christian's cranking out an hour and a half of material a week! And it's good! It moves along, it's funny, and the acting is first rate.

Think of this as Saturday Night Live as a political sitcom performed on stage before a live audience. No broadcasting. No huge budget.

Christian not only writes and directs Soapscum, he also stars as Svetlana Smirnov. That's him as Smirnov in the poster. He uses the episodes to comment on a wide variety of current issues and personalities. [Update: Christian emailed me to say that he's not directing this time. Jon Minton is. Sorry Jon.]

This year's incarnation takes place days before the 2008 election and the focus is on whether Smirnov is going to support Proposition 8. Characters include, besides various porn actors from the studio, Marie and Donny Osmond, Todd and Sarah Palin, a terrorist chained in the basement who turns out to be Osama Bin Laden, Barack Obama, four amazing aliens, and a slew of others.



Here, the Palins are plotting. . . well, I can't quite remember what they were plotting. The script takes so many twists and turns. The guy in the tie is Obama.









The cast is so big they could have a full house even if there was no audience. And I suspect they'd have almost as good a time without an audience. The second person in red with the two story blond wig, sitting above the cast on the right[left - somewhere between third grade and a couple of years ago I knew the difference between left and right], is NOT Svetlana, but the narrator who keeps the audience appraised (and well behaved) of what all is happening between scenes. She also had the list of all the characters and named them before and after the show. But I didn't write them all down and there was no program.


But is it any good? The acting is good and considering they didn't have a lot of time to learn the script - and they have a new one next week - I don't remember any flubs. The jokes would be funny to liberals but it might get tedious for conservatives. The people we were with thought it was a bit too long - partly, I think because it doesn't start until 10:30pm and it ended just past midnight. Considering what they were trying to pull off and their low budget, I thought it was amazing. (I have two standards. One is an absolute standard. The other is based on quality/cost. This one did pretty well on the absolute standard and would have swept the Tony's on quality/cost.)

And we have it here in Anchorage at Out North (you can buy tickets online) for three more episodes. And don't worry if you missed the first two episodes, it doesn't matter, trust me.

Christian has a pretty strong background in theater. I met him when he took some public administration classes with me. But he already had a masters in theater and had performed and/or directed in San Francisco, New York, and Budapest where he lived for several years. He's also the director for the Anchorage Theater of Youth and has been active in HIV/AIDS education. He's bright and aware and it shows in Soapscum.

Bent Alaska has the details of when the other episodes will be presented.

Robert Lapage's The Blue Dragon in Berkeley

Wow! I just saw the future of theater. I had no idea what I was going to see. I went into Oakland today to see friends I've known forever. They were going to a play tonight and asked if I wanted to come along. I said sure.

Then we picked up my ticket at will call after dinner and walked around campus till it began.

No pictures during the show, but I took this before and it will help a little to understand why this was so incredible. If you look at the stage, you can see the three vertical lines that divide the stage into four units. Think of the stage more as a computer window that can be divided into eight frames. Four on top and four below. The stage was alternatively one large frame, one half screen frame, or one small frame; two frames (top and bottom, two small frames, though I can't remember how often or how configured, I remember one small one on top and another below over to the side open together.)

But there was also a "curtain" that was the canvas for computer graphics, which again could be part of the whole or the whole itself. This is like describing someone tying his shoe. It may get you the info, but the reader still can't tie the shoelace, or, in this case, imagine the stage.. It rained and it snowed, for example, it was an airport with perfect arrival and departure signs.

The play opened - I'm not even sure which of the following was first, but I think I have it right - with a man standing on the lower half of the screen/stage, at a small table about to do calligraphy. As he uses the brush to make his strokes, a single solid horizontal stroke appears above him in the upper left frame. And he talks about the Chinese character for the number one. Then he makes a tree and then a forest. Then he does child and it appears in the next screen. Immediately I knew this was going to be my kind of experience.

I think this was followed by the Chinese dancer in white came out. (Though she might have been first.)

She danced with her scarf flowing. Then suddenly puffs of white exploded out of the end of the scarf as the computer extended her dance magically. And as this was happening on the lower half, the black screen also became a movie screen with the credits. (Don't bet on the sequences exactly, I'm trying to pull this out of memory totally.)

This all could have been a big gimmick, but it wasn't. Robert Lapage managed to use a much greater variety of tools to help him create his stage and it almost all fit absolutely perfectly. The actors at times blended in with computer graphics.

The almost two hour play just flew by. In part, I think because the scenes changed more like television than a play. We didn't have the stage simply go black and wait as actors moved furniture for the next scene. Instead the scenes evaporated and appeared through the graphics. The stage was a perfect passenger section of a jet, it was a commuter train, a regular train, a boat. It was the Canadian ex pat's two story loft apartment, an art gallery, a bar.

What I've always liked about movies is that when done well, they could tell the story in visual - color, light and dark, etc. - and audio and tell the story with more than words. They went beyond theater because you could have the real world as your stage. Lepage has used the computer to make this possible on stage too.

Now, since I've spent all this time on the stagecraft, you might be wondering about the play. Surely it was upstaged by all the glitz. Perhaps in the same way that seeing one's first movie would cause you to talk about the technology more than the story. Well, it wasn't glitz. All the techie stuff was exactly right for the story. It wasn't gratuitous. I've seen computer generated backdrops, and lighting, and the incredible dancing of Bridgman and Packer who danced on stage with live video of themselves dancing. In their performance at times you couldn't tell, even though we were very close, which was the live dancer and which the video.

Lepage has taken all the experimentation and applied it to his story of the French-Canadian artist expat in Shanghai whose old friend visits him on her way to adopting a baby in China. The story of their two compromised careers, of the need for babies, of love, of disappointment, all of this was told almost movie like, but with live actors on stage before a live audience. Three very real actors and lots of brilliant stagecraft.

I was totally dazzled.

(There were two scenes that I might have cut. At least I didn't feel they were integrated into the whole as seemlessly as everything else. The Chinese KFC ad near the beginning generated laughs, but wasn't connected to anything else in the play. My friends suggested it helped show the contrast between the old and new China, but to me it seemed an intrusion. I also didn't quite understand the scene with the iconic Chinese revolutionary dancer. The CCTV (Chinese Central Television) going-off-the-air broadcast worked better because it emphasized the closing of a night and it ended in static which transferred onto the stage.

I'm still stoked and absolutely delighted G and H pulled me into this. Great night. Anyone in the Berkeley area who wants to see a great production has a few more days left. (Comparing the box office dates to the post card dates, I'm guessing they added a couple of performances.)

Here's a more professional review from the Bay Area Arts and Entertainment Blog.

The Black Cockerel

We went to Out North Saturday night for their second world premiere of a play in two months. (The first was The Man in the Attic.) I'm not sure what constitutes an official world premiere. The first half was acted out. The second half the key actors had their scripts in front of them on music stands. While they knew the lines pretty well, they did peek down at and turned the pages.



Should we have different standards for a Nigerian playwright whose play is performed in Anchorage with local actors and a local director in a tiny playhouse, than we have for a Broadway play staged with well-known actors?

Maybe, but as I used to tell students when they complained my grading was too hard for a school like UAA, "Just because you're at UAA, doesn't mean you should be treated like second-rate students." And if these are serious theater folks, they need honest reactions.


And that said, I'm glad I went to see the play. I learned about African history, there was some riveting acting, some less than riveting acting, and I got to learn a bit of the process of developing a play.

But I don't want you to think the playwright is just some international student who landed in Fairbanks and writes plays to keep warm in the winter. The program notes tell us that playwright Ademola Bello

[I]n 2001...won both the Audience and Panelist Choice Awards at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, for his play, The Blackguard Prince. His other plays have had stage readings and workshop productions in New York at Actors Studio, Lark Play Development Center, and Frederick Loewe Room.

You can learn more about the playwright, who was in the audience Saturday night from the ADN article on him .


Basically the play is about Jonas Savimbi, rebel leader of Unitas in Angola and, for a while, CIA beneficiary, and his relationship with his foreign minister, Tito Chingunji,whose family, early on, are imprisoned. We also have a CIA agent named Jack Abramoff involved as well.


I think there is a lot of promise here. There were parts near the beginning where there was too much teaching of history in the dialogue which distracted from the drama. There needs to be a better way to get the necessary information across. While Earl Smith, who played Savimbi put life into his character - I'd say he nailed Savimbi except I've never even seen clips of Savimbi, but he certainly filled my stereotypes of a post colonial African tyrant - I didn't feel an ongoing chemistry among the three key actors. Darren Williams had probably the most difficult part. He played the foreign minister who wants to end the killing and find a way to peace, but who's forced to keep working for the rebel leader who intends to keep the civil war going until he becomes president. If he hopes to see his family alive, he has to do Savimbi's bidding. But how would someone keep this up for six years? And how does one carry out a role in which he bounces back and forth from confronting his tormenter to acting compliant? I have no idea. Williams gave it a good try, but it was an extremely hard role, and there was too much repetition of the same sort of cat and mouse games between Savimbi and Chingunji in the script.

But wow! What a way to fill in gaps about African history. To have Jonas Savimbi reincarnated live in Anchorage stirred much of the audience, I think, to go back and do a little homework. And the glimpse of Abramoff scamming African rebels before he took to scamming Americans more directly was also a revelation. And being face to face with a psychopath is always a daunting experience for anyone with a conscience.

We may live in Anchorage, but we get enough of these intimate first class theater experiences, to make it pretty exciting for me. I'd much rather watch something here at Out North or at Cyrano's than in the Performing Arts Center where I'm usually far from the stage at much higher prices. The last set of pictures is from the after play Q&A.


OK, here's a map of Africa from Africamap.com but you'll have to explore the map to find Angola for yourself. It was a Portuguese colony as was Mozambique.



This (first page of a) biographical obituary of Jonas Savimbi in the Review of African Political Economy is in sharp contrast to the NY Times report. The first emphasizes how he prolonged civil war until his death, causing the deaths and suffering of countless and highlights his glory days as the darling of the Reagan administration. The latter doesn't mention his CIA connections, let alone his Reagan days, and plays down the havoc his personal ambition caused until his death.


Finally, I've put off reading the ADN's review of the play until I finished writing this. Linda Billington gives a lot more information than I do, but in the end, we're fairly close in our assessments.

Grand Opening of Anchorage's Newest Stairwell

There's been a lot of hoopla about the grand opening of the new addition to the Anchorage Museum. We've been watching the building take shape for a couple of years now. And you can probably tell from the title that I wasn't captivated.


It was a chilly, blustery day, but people swarmed all over the outside and inside of the museum. There was entertainment out in the street and in the auditorium.





And some people were outside eating despite the chill.









Here's where you go in. OK so far. On the left of the front counter you can see the Library and Archive. Unfortunately, that wasn't open yet. Behind me are the Muse Cafe (I wonder how many museums have cafes with that name - [the first ten pages on google only found one at the Palm Springs Museum]) and the gift shop. We didn't look at them until later. But then you go into the museum. Or so I thought.

The first gallery you enter features a four story stairwell. The room is windowless, with dramatic lighting so that you get the full effect of this grand work of art.


The stairwell!! This is positively and totally avant garde. And you thought we were some hicktown whose museum would feature items of local artistic and historical significance. No way. Our grandest new work of art, with a four story gallery all to itself. is an homage to Anchorage fitness - a stairwell. No wimpy escalators for us.


The second floor galleries were closed off still. Who needs a gallery when we have this incredible stairwell?






There was a traveling Gold exhibit on the third floor to the left. But fortunately, the tickets had all been given away so we didn't have to get off the stairwell.


It seemed a bit strange that they had such a nicely printed sign to tell us this. If they knew in advance, why advertise it in the newspaper? It wasn't just this sign, there was another one behind the front desk that said it was sold out and that sign wasn't one you could easily get reprinted the last day.







<


Looking away from the gold exhibit, you could see these frosted windows. When we got to the fourth floor, we got a possible reason for the frosted windows.


The stairwell ended on the fourth floor.
I think there was another closed gallery to the left as we reached the top of the magnificent stairwell. To our right we saw that the fourth floor windows were clear.

Looking at the view - the roof of the existing museum building, a roof that doesn't fit the glitz of the new addition - offered a possible explanation for the opaque windows below. How about a roof garden? I know, I know. All these clever ideas cost money. And if I donate $5 million they would be happy to put in a roof garden with my name on it.





But there was a small gallery on the fourth floor. Appropriately, it was dedicated to the new addition to the museum.







And here is where my sense of the importance of the stairwell was confirmed. There, in blood red, was the stairwell marked out on the sketch of the museum. It is the centerpiece, the masterpiece, the piece d resistance, of the addition. I always allow for the possibility I'm wrong. But what else could that red zigzag be?



In this gallery you can learn about the architect, David Chipperfield, stairmeister.












Unfortunately, all these descriptions are in the laudatory tone of book jacket covers. Usually museum curators are more objective, but I guess this is their baby, not their exhibit.












Now really what does this actually say? I'm starting to feel bad now. I sat next to the author of these words at the Tuesday Dr. Brokenleg breakfast. It's much easier for me when I don't know the people I write about. I wish, though, that I'd seen the museum before the breakfast. Then I could have asked the director some questions. But these words could be written about any museum anywhere. There is nothing specific about Anchorage or the building here.







Function, in the shape of a stairwell, absolutely drives form, but they don't mention that. And now back to the centerpiece of the new addition. This stairwell isn't just on the left and the right, part of it goes up the middle too.


There was also a choice of an elevator. An elephant sized elevator. I understand they need a giant elevator to get crates with large pieces up to the galleries. Probably there was another elevator somewhere. I didn't see it. But no one would build a wing with just one elevator for four stories. I know we Alaskans are tough and will want to only take our magnificent stairs to get to the galleries. But some of the tourists are a little older and they might appreciate an elevator. But if there were only one, how long would they have to wait?


Once we got back down to the bottom and marveled anew at this spectacular new piece of functional art, we wandered to the old section of the museum and into the theater where we were just in time to hear Gabriel Ayala of the Yaqui people of southern Arizona. The video is short, and the audio is from my pocket Canon Powershot, but it will give you an idea of how sweet his sound is.

We then went back out the new main entrance. On the way we checked out the new cafe. There were about five items for eating and about five pages of wines, beers, and other alcoholic beverages. There was no shortage of $40 and up bottles of wine. When we finally got to order, it turned out they were out of what we wanted. No problem. This was their first day with real people and will probably be the busiest day they will have for the next five years at least.







I got the basic overview of the new addition and the park from the fourth floor gallery. I've added a bit to help flesh it out. I was really looking forward to all the birch trees, but at this point there's nothing there but dirt. Somewhere I read it would be landscaped this summer.


OK. I'm a bit taken aback by what's inside the museum. I recognize that the second floor and fourth floor galleries aren't open yet and we couldn't get into the Gold exhibit because the tickets were snapped up already. And presumably there will eventually be art pieces in the lobby. But to walk into a room that has nothing but a giant staircase left me feeling flat. There's an awful lot of space taken up by stairs. And there is nothing to see from the stairs. No view outside, no overview of a gallery. You really have to hike a bit before you ever see anything that resembles art (ok, it is a very nice staircase) or history or science. And today, if you didn't have a gold ticket, there was no art to see in the new building, unless you count the drawings of the building on the fourth floor. A little history in there too.

Unlike the last museum addition which is human scale and whose stairway (on right) complements the room, the new stairwell exists in isolation and the size dwarfs humans. I'll withhold further judgment until the other galleries are opened up, but I still don't see how they will get around having this giant stairwell at the center of the new addition.

The outside of the building looks fine. Though this picture of the Figg Museum in Davenport, Iowa shows that Chipperton used leftover ideas in Anchorage.

Alaskan Among Google Doodle Finalists

Google's put up a link to their doodle contest for school kids. Normally I wouldn't promote such a blatant attempt to brainwash kids and get cheap art work, but there's an Alaskan among the finalists.
Geordey Sherrick from Juneau Douglas High School was the Region 10 winner in the grades 10-12 category. From what I can tell from the contest rules, he has already won a trip to New York on May 20.

But now the voting is open to the public, so if you want to vote for him, or any other regional finalist, you can vote here. I happen to think Geordey's is the best of his grade level - simple, clean, and elegant.

There were two state finalists for each level.

The other Alaska 10-12th grade winner is Alexandra Crowder.

The Alaska 7-9th grade winners are:

Kyra Laulainen and

Katherine Seeman

Alaska's 4-6th grade winners are

Michael Parnaell and

Malia Transue

And the Alaska K-3rd grade winners are

Elijah Griffin and

May Geml

Contests with two winners per state are great opportunities for people living in states with small populations like Alaska.

The Man in the Attic - Out North - Acting a Different Culture

In the first post on this world-premiere of Timothy Daly's play, The Man in the Attic, presented at Out North Theater in Anchorage, I said there were parts I liked and one I didn't. In the first post I discussed the part of "Speaker" which I liked a lot.

In this post I want to talk about the issue of producing a play where the language and culture of the actors and audience are different those from the those of the characters in the play. In this case the play, by an Australian playwright, was put on in English in the United States. The play was about Germans at the end of World War II.

The first time I can remember thinking about this issue was long ago watching American movies dubbed in Thai. Imagine John Wayne or Steve McQueen speaking Thai. It was a joke, which destroyed the mood of the movies. I also recognize that Thais didn't react as I did.

But many people don't want to read subtitles in a movie. I suppose there are people who simply can't read that fast. I know trying to read Thai subtitles was totally out of the question for me. I just couldn't read that fast. It is often difficult to impossible to read the subtitles through the gaps between the heads in front of you. Opera has found a way to scroll the words being sung in 'surtitles' above the stage.

But switching languages can change everything. Language is more than content. Language is a major conveyor of culture. Even if you don't understand the words, you learn something about the other culture, experientially, by hearing it. Language also affects how people's tongues and lips move and how their whole body moves. Language affects who you are and what you do.

When I asked Thai teachers, long ago, to write in English on topics like "The Most Important Day of My Life" they wrote very personal, often tragic stories they would absolutely never have told me out loud in Thai. I always hypothesized that something about writing in English freed them to say things they normally would never discuss. As though English wasn't quite real. Certainly, when you learn profanity in another language, it doesn't have the same emotional impact as the equivalents in your mother language.

When I talked about this with friends, a married couple - he's from Romania and she's from France - they started exploring this idea. She immediately said that she is a very different person in French than in English; she's much more sarcastic in French. He said he was glad they met in English. He recounted an incident in Paris recently where he was dropping off the family in the middle of traffic and they were taking their time getting out of the car and he was feeling pressure from the other drivers. He finally shouted "Get Out" in English. He said he would never have said anything like that to his parents in Romanian. (In another cultural insight, his wife said Paris drivers don't worry about the horns of other drivers at all.) I'm convinced that language is important to who we are and how we behave.

If anyone is still with me, I'm ready to get back to the play.

When you are putting on a play in which the characters speak a language (here German) different from the audience (in this case English,) you don't have a lot of choices. Putting on this play in German wasn't an option. The play itself was written in English. The audience would miss too much if it were all in German. You can't use subtitles, and opera's LED surtitles were certainly too expensive for this little theater. I did find one post on surtitles for traveling productions of plays. Of course subtitles and surtitles distract the audiences from watching the actors closely. One solution - at times with dreadful results - is to have the actors use German accents. Or you can just go with English (in this case). So, with all this background, I can explain the problem I had with this play.

The actor who played the Nazi husband had a strong American twang in his voice. It just did not work for me at all. The only time I thought he was right was the 30 seconds or so when he played the role of an American military officer - then he fit perfectly. It wasn't just the voice. Americans talk and walk and move with a freedom that is very different from how Germans - especially at the end of WW II hiding a Jew in their attic - talk, walk, and move. (My parents were refugees from Germany and I spent the school year of 1964-65 in Germany.)

The other actors also spoke English, but with much more neutral accents. And their body language was much more subdued so I could believe their parts - particularly the wife who looked hungry and timid. The man in the attic looked a little too well fed for his part, but otherwise carried his part off well as did the neighbor.

I do thank Out North for making plays like this available in Anchorage, for taking risks, and for challenging our local actors to higher levels. I'm sure the director, Dick Reichman, had a lot to do with this.

The Man in the Attic - Out North - Role of the Speaker

Anchorage's Out North Theater was the setting for the world premiere of Australian playwright Timothy Daly's play, The Man in the Attic. I think it’s neat when we get to see world premieres (of non-Alaskan) plays here.

This is not a review of the play. I haven’t had enough time to process it, nor, having seen it just once, am I sure I can make any serious pronouncements without going back to see if my recollections are accurate..

The premise is an interesting twist on an old familiar theme - the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. What is it about Nazi Germany that fascinates writers so much more than other human persecution and suffering around the world? (I write this aware from the program that Black Cockerel [link added later] of Africa - another world premiere - is up next at Out North.) Is it because both the persecutors and persecuted are white? Is it because the context is already so familiar that the audience already understands who the good guys and bad guys are?

I realize that when I say I haven’t processed the play yet, I’m really stalling. Overall the play kept my attention. There were a few things I really liked, one I didn’t, and that while there were moments - like the man in the attic’s debate with God - of above average interest, for the most part the script was ordinary. The language conveyed the content, but the words didn’t dazzle me, say, the way they do in a Tom Stoppard play.

But let’s also remember that the cast was local Alaskans with acting experience, but not world class actors. I’m reminded of this because Bernie Blaine, the actor who played “Speaker,” did manage to elevate all her lines into riveting speech.

But I’d like to explore two ideas that came from the experience of the play. The first is about acting in a play that is set in a different culture and language. The second is about the device of “Speaker” the part that combined the roles of Greek chorus, narrator, alter ego, and a few more. Bernie herself, after the play, described her part as "the literary device."

I’ll do Speaker first and language in a second post.

The basic set was a small house and attic that were open to the audience. To the right were two chairs where one or two actors sat when they were not in the scene and where action in the neighbor’s house took place. On the left was “Speaker” sitting at a table with electronic equipment. She confused me at first. She began, if I remember correctly, as a narrator giving the audience asides. “This is a story” I remember her saying. But she also said things that the actors echoed. And this was done so well it seemed totally natural. Later in the play she actually got up and gave one of the characters a prop. At other times she would prod a particular actor into examining something more closely. And all the while she was controlling the music and other sound effects. This latter role I think was the director’s idea, not the playwright’s.

This part grew on me as the play went on. I think in part it was because of the actor’s great voice and persona. She was a bit like the lion tamer at the circus - keeping the actors performing, prompting them now and then, seemingly in charge (controlling the music added to this sense) but trying to keep out of the spotlight as much as possible.

Why was this role in the play? Was it merely to make sure the audience understood the story line? Did it have some greater metaphorical meaning, perhaps intended to mimic the way the Germans controlled the stories the man in the attic heard? Or the way the Nazi’s controlled the stories the Germans heard? I don’t see direct parallels.

In any case, it was nicely done and added greatly to my playwatching experience.

Part II is here.

Elephants - Part 1

[Thursday, April 2, 2009 12:30am Thai Time]
The bus to Lampang (about 90 km south of Chiang Mai) dropped us off in front of the Thai Elephant Conservation Center and we called JP who told us to get our tickets and ride the shuttle up to the showgrounds. Here's another site that has videos of Center.



On the way up we saw this board next to information on getting a day of Mahout training.

The show focused more on skills the elephants had that made them so important for getting timber from the forest to the roads. But most such work is no longer available in Thailand because the government has programs to protect teak forests.

The show also included a non-traditional Thai elephant activity - painting.

Here are the three paintings we saw the elephants paint.

Apparently, elephants have very good control with their trunks and can do this sort of painting, but these representational paintings are done with close supervision from the mahouts. But when painting on their own, the elephants do much more abstract work than this. But the Center sells the paintings so this is a form of fundraiser.


After the show, people got to feed the elephants. A bunch of little bananas was 20 Baht ($.60). Most of the other visitors were Thai, though there were a a few other foreigners.



JP is a doctoral student doing his dissertation research here at the center. We met him last year and finally got a chance to go out and visit him in the center. His research is very interesting but I was sworn to silence until his work is published. But an earlier paper he published as a masters student on how elephants recognize themselves in mirrors. Here's the abstract:

Considered an indicator of self-awareness, mirror self-recognition (MSR) has long seemed limited to humans and apes. In both phylogeny and human ontogeny, MSR is thought to correlate with higher forms of empathy and altruistic behavior. Apart from humans and apes, dolphins and elephants are also known for such capacities. After the recent discovery of MSR in dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), elephants thus were the next logical candidate species. We exposed three Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) to a large mirror to investigate their responses. Animals that possess MSR typically progress through four stages of behavior when facing a mirror: (i) social responses, (ii) physical inspection (e.g., looking behind the mirror), (iii) repetitive mirror-testing behavior, and (iv) realization of seeing themselves. Visible marks and invisible sham-marks were applied to the elephants' heads to test whether they would pass the litmus “mark test” for MSR in which an individual spontaneously uses a mirror to touch an otherwise imperceptible mark on its own body. Here, we report a successful MSR elephant study and report striking parallels in the progression of responses to mirrors among apes, dolphins, and elephants. These parallels suggest convergent cognitive evolution most likely related to complex sociality and cooperation.

You can read the whole article at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.